This paper tracks economists' rising, yet elusive and unstable interest in collective decision mechanism after World War II. We replace their examination of voting procedures and social welfare functions in the 1940s and 1950s in the context of their growing involvement with policy-making....

A quantitative turn in history of economic thought is looming. We argue that engineering it consicously is of crucial importance for historians of economics. We also highlight the limitations of quantitative techniques.Yet, the combination of qualitative and quantitative research could...

This paper tells the development of economics at MIT between 1940 and 1972. The recruitment of Samuelson in 1940 fostered the establishment of a small community of economists within an engineering institute which was itself undergoing major transformations. A “new economics” was then shaped...